Prep: 10 mins

Cook: 2 hrs

Total: 2 hrs 10 mins

Servings: 6

Yield: 4 cups

Once the cold weather hits, most of us trade our icy cocktails and frozen drinks for warming beverages. Enter mulled wine, a winter holiday favorite that takes the red wine we love and enhances it with a slew of spices, a hint of sweetener, and an extra ABV kick of brandy.

Standard recipes for mulled wine start you with a sweeter wine, like a red zinfandel, and then have you add sweeteners like maple syrup or brown sugar. To make mulled wine an option for anyone following a low carb diet like keto, we've started with a wine that's low in sugar, we swapped out the sweetener for a natural, noncaloric one, and we and kept the additional carbs from brandy to a minimum. We also stretched the recipe by having you first infuse the spices in water, so that you can enjoy a larger serving while staying in ketosis.

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Ingredients

• 1 cup water

• 1 orange, sliced into 1/4-inch-thin slices

• 1 cup cranberries, fresh or thawed from frozen

• 2 tablespoons sugar-free maple syrup or low-carb brown sugar substitute

• 3 pods star anise

• 3 cinnamon sticks

• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, grated

• 1 bottle dry red wine, like Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Pino Noir

• 1/3 cup brandy

Steps to Make It

1. Gather all of the ingredients together.

2. In a slow cooker on low, or in a large pot over very low heat, add all ingredients except the wine and brandy. Let the mixture infuse for one hour.

3. After an hour, add wine and brandy and let mixture infuse for an additional hour.

4. Serve warm once the wine and brandy have infused for the full hour. Meanwhile, you can keep any remaining drink hot for more servings by leaving it in the slow cooker on "warm." Or, keep the remaining drink in the pot covered with the lid, occasionally turning the heat on low.

Tips

• Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pino Noir are excellent choices for the wine in this recipe because they’re typically not very sweet, which means they’re lower in sugar. For even lower sugar count, you can choose a natural red wine; those may be lower in carbs, but check to verify.
• Orange rind adds great depth of flavor, but it does impart a small amount of bitterness. If you don’t enjoy that, peel the orange before slicing it for infusing.

Variations

Follow the same process of infusing aromatics in water first, then adding alcohol for a second infusion with any of these variations:

• Use 1 cup raspberries and strawberries in place of the orange for a berry-mulled wine.
• Add 1 thumb of fresh ginger, sliced thinly, for even more warming power.
• Add 6 peppercorns for a hint of savory heat.
• For an herbal take on mulled wine, omit the spices and instead use 1 sprig of rosemary and 1 sprig of thyme in the infusion.
• Swap red wine for a dry white, such as a sauvignon blanc; swap the cranberries for 1/2 of a lemon, sliced thinly.
• Use extracts to fortify the flavors in the wine: 1/2 teaspoon orange or lemon extract to enhance the citrus flavors, or 1/2 teaspoon anise extract to strengthen the star anise.

Nutrition Facts
Servings: 6
Amount per serving
Calories	140
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 0g	0%
Saturated Fat 0g	0%
Cholesterol 0mg	0%
Sodium 7mg	0%
Total Carbohydrate 6g	2%
Dietary Fiber 1g	4%
Total Sugars 2g
Protein 0g
Vitamin C 4mg	21%
Calcium 21mg	2%
Iron 1mg	4%
Potassium 182mg	4%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.